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Association between flashbacks and structural brain abnormalities in posttraumatic stress disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

M.C.W. Kroes ,
M.G. Whalley ,
M.D. Rugg  and
C.R. Brewin
M.C.W. Kroes
Affiliation:
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Kapittelweg 29, 6525 ENNijmegen, The Netherlands
M.G. Whalley
Affiliation:
Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, LondonWC1E 6BT, UK
M.D. Rugg
Affiliation:
Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, University of California, Irvine, CA92697, USA
C.R. Brewin*
Affiliation:
Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, LondonWC1E 6BT, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 207 679 5927. E-mail address: c.brewin@ucl.ac.uk (C.R. Brewin).
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Abstract

Objective

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is reliably associated with reduced brain volume relative to healthy controls, in areas similar to those found in depression. We investigated whether in a PTSD sample brain volumes in these areas were related to reporting specific symptoms of PTSD or to overall symptom severity.

Method

Structural MRI scans were obtained from 28 participants diagnosed with PTSD according to DSM-IV-TR. Participants reported the extent of individual PTSD symptoms using the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale. Voxel-based morphometry applying the Dartel algorithm implemented within SPM5 was used to identify volumetric changes, related to PTSD total, symptom cluster, and individual symptom scores.

Results

Brain volume was unrelated to overall PTSD severity, but greater reexperiencing scores predicted reduced volumes in the middle temporal and inferior occipital cortices. Increased reports of flashbacks predicted reduced volume in the insula/parietal operculum and in the inferior temporal gyrus.

Conclusion

The data illustrate the value of analyses at the symptom level within a patient population to supplement group comparisons of patients and healthy controls. Areas identified were consistent with a neurobiological account of flashbacks implicating specific abnormalities in the ventral visual stream.

Keywords

PTSDMRITraumaFlashbacksVBMNeurocircuitry
Type
Original article
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 26 , Issue 8 , November 2011 , pp. 525 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier Masson SAS 2011

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